May 31.—­We had scarcely left, our camp, when swarms of crows and kites (Milvus isiurus) took possession of it, after having given us a fair fight during the previous days, whilst we were drying the meat.  Their boldness was indeed remarkable, and if the natives had as much, we should soon have had to quit our camp.  Proceeding, we travelled over a broken and very stony country, with a stiff soil, but mixed with so much sand that even the Severn tree grew well.  There was another small tree, the branches of which were thickly covered with bright green leaves; it had round inferior fruit, about half an inch in diameter, which was full of seeds:  when ripe, it was slightly pulpy and acidulous, and reminded me of the taste of the coarse German rye bread.  In consequence of this resemblance, we called this little tree the Bread tree of the Lynd.  I ate handfulls of this fruit without the slightest inconvenience.  A species of Pittosporum, and several Acacias, Pandanus, and the leguminous Ironbark, were scattered through an open forest of Ironbark and lanceolate box.  I observed here a very ornamental little tree, with drooping branches and linear lanceolate drooping leaves three inches long; it very much resembled a species of Capparis that I had seen at the Isaacs.  Its blossoms are very small, and the calyx and corolla have each five divisions; the stamens are opposite the petals; it bore a fruit like a small apple, with a hard outside, but pulpy and many seeded within, like Capparis; the calyx was attached to the base of the fruit.

The rock was still granitic, with small outbreaks of basalt; the leaflets of white mica were visible everywhere in the soil and in the large ant-hills, whose building materials were derived from the decomposed felspar.  The bed of the river was frequently rocky, and very broad, with low banks and no water.  The highest flood-marks we observed were from six to eight feet above the level of the bed; these marks were on the trunks of Casuarinas, Melaleucas, and flooded-gum, which grew along the channel.  The country in general had a winterly appearance; and the grass round the camp was dry, but I observed the fine grass of the Isaacs, and many varieties which grow on the Suttor and Burdekin, which will yield an excellent feed in the proper season; and, even at the present, neither our bullocks nor horses were starving.

The part of the country in which we were, possesses great interest in a meteorological point of view.  In the centre of the York Peninsula, between the east coast and the gulf, and on the slopes to the latter, as might be expected, the northerly and easterly winds which set in so regularly after sunset, as well along the Burdekin as on the basaltic table land, failed, and were succeeded here by slight westerly and easterly breezes, without any great and decided movement in the atmosphere; and westerly winds, which had formerly been of rare occurrence, became more frequent and stronger.  The days, from the stillness of the air, were very hot; but at night the dews were heavy, and it was very cold.  Charley asserted that he had seen ice at our last camp.